Amy Clampitt

Amy Clampitt was born on June 15, 1920, and brought up in New Providence, Iowa. She wrote poetry in high school, but then ceased and focused her energies on writing fiction instead. She graduated from Grinnell College, and from that time on lived mainly in New York City. To support herself, she worked as a secretary at the Oxford University Press, a reference librarian at the Audubon Society, and a freelance editor.

Not until the mid-1960s, when she was in her forties, did she return to writing poetry. Her first poem was published by The New Yorker in 1978. In 1983, at the age of sixty-three, she published her first full-length collection, The Kingfisher.

A Hermit Thrush
Nothing's certain. Crossing, on this longest day,
the low-tide-uncovered isthmus, scrambling up
the scree-slope of what at high tide
will be again an island,

Gradual Clearing
Late in the day the fog
wrung itself out like a sponge
in glades of rain,
sieving the half-invisible

Nothing Stays Put
In memory of Father Flye, 1884-1985
The strange and wonderful are too much with us.

Exmoor
Lost aboard the roll of Kodac-
olor that was to have super-
seded all need to remember
Somerset were: a large flock

Syrinx
Like the foghorn that's all lung,
the wind chime that's all percussion,
like the wind itself, that's merely air
in a terrible fret, without so much

A Hedge Of Rubber Trees
The West Village by then was changing; before long
the rundown brownstones at its farthest edge
would have slipped into trendier hands. She lived,
impervious to trends, behind a potted hedge of

Beach Glass

While you walk the water's edge,turning over conceptsI can't envision, the honking buoyserves notice that at any timethe wind may change,the reef-bell clattersits treble monotone, deaf as Cassandrato any note but warning. The ocean,cumbered by no business more urgent than keeping open old accountsthat never balanced,goes on shuffling its millenniumsof quartz, granite, and basalt. It behavestoward the permutations of novelty—driftwood and shipwreck, last night'sbeer cans, spilt oil, the coughed-upresidue of ...